NSFW Rin x Archer lemon thing. Not exactly the happiest, fluffiest sex fic in the world but also doesn't merit any particular content warnings. Feedback is always appreciated. If you're here just for the sex rather than any of the build up, I gotchu, just find the last "⚜⚜⚜".
Here He Will Always Stumble; Here He Will Always Break
Death. Death is the one constant which continues ceaselessly so that the life of the world – no, the lives of those humans who inhabit it – may continue. It is not as if he could forget this fact if he tried. It is, after all, the meaning of his continued existence. Instead, he feels this fact, and he feels it forever.
Backwards and forwards, time holds little or no meaning. History happens differently from up here – this kind of consciousness or cosmic significance (what a joke). History happens differently from down here – more realistically – in hell. There are other existences like his. Those who will not die, those whose purposes have lingered in the minds of the people left behind. Some of them still have titles. Some of them even still have names. One of those people, dead in some parts of history, alive in others, and yet to be born at one point in time, said something once: “Hell is other people.”
Having experienced, over and again, parts of human history that repeat mistake upon mistake, he thinks it is one of the only true things any one of them has ever said. He wonders if it affords that man any peace – that he'd figured it out before their inevitable end.
Sometimes, he would go to a place he had been before. The familiarity would come in surprising bursts of clarity, which after the second or third time in a history of hundreds he had wished would stop. The second time he came to the same place at roughly the same juncture of time, it disoriented him. He had only become certain of what was happening when, through a sea of human faces, one he had once killed to save he now killed to save another. It had haunted him, more than the other deaths – deemed pointless in his eyes but not to the whole of humankind. The third time, he had been more certain of himself and more resigned to the role he had to play. The third time, he had momentarily believed that repeating the same sorry circumstance with a slightly revised cast of roles and characters might lead him to have another chance to persuade them all – not to need to die.
No such luck.
In every effort to stem the tide, to cut off the bleeding, there was only ever more in the sea of red. A few multiples of three later – the same course of several thousand years, strangely similar from this point of view – he gave up hoping that it would be any different. He got in, he got out. He wore vestments of red admirably. He forgot which was stain and which was the true color of the garment he wore. He tried to stop worrying about when, where, why... Because it was all the same. Because this was the bargain he had so foolishly struck. And because this was all that could be done for it.
This slow change in his perspective, over the course of an interminable life after death, brings him to the moment when, for the first time in an impossible-to-measure amount of time, he finds himself confused. There is, of course, the chaos and abandon of a battlefield to which he is accustomed. There are the pangs of empathy that he regards as acts of stupid penance for his own foolishness and little more. But these are commonplace, constant – his existence. Then, for the first time in forever, he is faced with an anomaly.
Heat blooms outward like blood over his side, beneath his ribs. He cannot tell from where the wound comes or why he feels it so much when nothing can truly kill him. His hand reaches down to nurse his side, which seems strange. The world narrows to his perception of only a few things, drawn back from whatever present hell there had been moments before. He looks down and sees pale, calloused but otherwise unmarred flesh. No red comes away on his hand, but instead he sees something brilliant leeching out from within his garment. Something long forgotten with the rest of the things he has tried to forget. Things he had tried to hold onto before he realized there would never be an end or respite to the fate he has resigned himself to. This one's insistent, ruby glow appears and strikes against something – hard – in his faded memory.
His fingers have time to close around something that ought to have been cool gone hot, like an organ. The triplet points of the gemstone begin to burn through a stubborn resistance in the back of his mind. He feels a dropping down through his body, along his spine, as if the beating of his heart has sped up enough to jar itself free and to ooze down into every empty space inside him. The fleur-de-lis that cradles the gem and links it to its chain remains fairly cool to the touch – cool enough to send another jolt through him, this time straight up his arm. He tries to draw the long safe, protected, and forgotten necklace from the pocket that has kept it hidden since years lost their meaning, but he never gets the chance. His awareness floods with red, with light, and then with darkness – removing him from the battlefield like the hot, rapid issue of a bullet from a gun.
⚜⚜⚜
Being furious with him is easy. Rin finds that it's much easier than being furious at herself, at her father, at the fact that she had forgotten the most important thing, again. But then, not long into that first, long night, he changes tact. The feeling that her heart had formed a knot in her chest eases up pretty quickly, but it is replaced by something that should bother her even more.
Standing before him, she notices how she has to look up to have any hope to see his eyes. A few hours later, she entrusts her body to him, flinging herself off the side of a building to escape one form of certain death, counting on him to spare her from another. He follows the order seamlessly, even if the rest of what follows is something which cannot be celebrated as a victory – for anyone. Not that night.
When Rin finds that her body will no longer allow her to stay alert, she heads back to her bed. It is with a groan that she falls down against it, vertebra crackling as they find easier positions to occupy. She looks up between each of the four posts then at the hazy, natural light out the window. Is it dawn or evening? And does it really matter?
“This Holy Grail War is wearing me out,” she remarks, to no one in particular and without real thought as to the precision of her words. She isn't used to there being anyone around to hear them.
“You could have taken me up on the offer to remain in the cellar for its duration,” comes a deep voice without a physical presence. The voice floods down her spine with a chill and a jolt that has her sitting back up in her bed, heart racing. For a moment, she cannot keep the shock off her face or the desperate will to find the source of the voice.
“Archer!” she scolds him the very moment she can screw her face into a more suitable expression of displeasure. She peeks through cracks in her eyelids to realize that he has cracked her bedroom door open and has not spoken from a dematerialized state at all. Sloppy of her, not to notice.
“Yes, Rin?” he asks. It is respectful, patient, even, but for some reason that annoys her even more.
“What are you doing there? Hiding in the shadows,” she answers him.
“I... lost track of you,” he says, his voice seeming to fall over a few lumps in his throat which he tries to clear.
“I'm going to bed,” she announces. She glances at him a bit more deliberately, seeing more the white of his eyes than anything else as he looks away from her.
“Yes, Master,” he says – dryly, and just like the deep, carrying sound of his voice, that lighter, sharp one crawls up her spine. She huffs and tries to let her spine settle back down into the bed.
It doesn't work.
Some time later, her bare feet find the rug beneath her bed. She sits up a bit like a zombie, eyes and head heavy but still affixed in place to her neck. She rolls her head from side to side, stretching just a bit and trying to stop feeling quite so much like she might pass out. She knows she is not sleeping, though, cannot sleep. It occurs to her that she cannot afford this waste of time. If she is going to get any sleep, it needs to be the kind that will actually allow the wholly human part of her to mend and maintain itself.
She walks over to the little table and chair somewhere beyond the foot of her bed, blind and bleary. The heels of her hand brace against the little table and she cracks open her eyes to aid in her search. She reaches out for a large book which had been resting, open to a certain page, against it. She pulls at it by its center, thumb keeping her place by pressing on its binding. She looks at the characters on the page, but they seem to run together. She is not asleep, her heart racing and an insistent pressure behind her eyes, but she can barely keep those eyes open.
She is alone in her room, as she always is. She ventures out into the hall and very gingerly makes her way down the stairs, book carried against her body in one arm. She ventures to the living room and looks around, finding it perfect, clean, and empty. It is less dusty than she sometimes allows it to get, too, she she is reminded again that she is not alone here. It isn't just a dream.
“Archer?” she calls, stifling the presence of a yawn in her voice.
She had not seen him in the room before. Whether he had been in the room but in an immaterial state or if he had heeded her call and come is not apparent. What is apparent is the change in the air, a constriction of something that is not quite natural and that seems to sparkle and shine for just a moment, announcing his presence. Then he is there, already casually seated on the couch, an ankle on top of one knee, not entirely unlike the first time she had seen him.
“I did not see any danger,” Archer explains.
Rin tries to give him some expression or vocalization that answers in the affirmative. It is nice that he would try to give her some explanation as to why he is being so casual with her, acting so much like he has belonged in this house for a long time before he arrived there. She frowns to stop that train of thought and jabs out her arm toward him, holding up the considerable weight of the book she had carried with her with just her wrist.
“Here,” she orders. After a moment's hesitation, he takes it.
“What's this?” he asks, his dark, coppery eyes scanning across the characters that span the page he had opened to.
“Read it,” Rin says, rather than telling him it's nothing important.
His brow furrows and he seems to redouble his efforts to find the beginning of the section, to start from something like the beginning. He looks as if he is trying to divine meaning from it, and she finds that she almost immediately feels that she must ask him to stop. She reaches down, four fingertips covering his line of sight. He looks up at her, glaring quite sharply for someone who ought to have had so little investment in the contents of the page.
“Read it to me,” she clarifies. Then, she nods down and indicates where she wants to sit, beside him. He has created quite a swath for himself with his chosen posture, but she sits to the center of the sofa, right at the outer edge of his thigh anyway.
“Can't you read?” Archer asks her, impertinent and deliberate.
She jabs her knee toward him in her nightdress. She straightens her back and tries to look proud, even with heavily closed eyes.
“I'm asking you to make yourself useful. Do you sleep?” she asks.
“It isn't necessary,” he replies. “You are more than capable of keeping me awake.”
Rin's eyes open and she glances over at his, searching for something for a moment. She shakes her head and gives up. She is still a bit lightheaded from the exhaustion which hovers but does not overtake her.
“Then read to me,” she orders again, doing her best not to wonder and certainly not to wonder out loud.
⚜⚜⚜
Their partnership gets off to a rough start. That much ought to have been expected. What he doesn't expect, but should have really, is how quickly it transitions into something easier, more comfortable, more familiar.
This place, like so many others, has been marked for war – a war in which he already knows the sides and the stakes. Only, this recurrence of time and place is different than those he has experienced before. Even the smell of the house and the air without it carries with it the breath of a life lived before. He knows when he opens his eyes and the rest of his senses to the strange, familiar, formal living room that the time has come when he will finally be able to set right what he had once done wrong. He would, at least, be able to kill a single person to spare so much more suffering, so much more nonsense. And then it would be over.
Only, there is one problem with that.
One singular, ever-present, quite loud, familiar, brash, novel, and – unfortunately – heartrendingly beautiful problem.
Tohsaka Rin.
He had forgotten her name. When she tells him, reminds him of it, he tastes it and holds onto it with an insistence he hasn't had about anything in so long that he cannot remember. It is her mistake, after all – to let him choose how to address her. He can see how it crawls across her skin and freezes her in place when he chooses – brazenly – “Rin,” and only 'Rin,' because he does not think he will get tired of saying it and he never wants to forget it again so long as he exists.
Other things are less unfamiliar in seeing them again – since so long ago. The way she walks, sometimes feline and other times with the rigor of an angry mannequin, the way she speaks, high and formal and dignified – always so dignified. The silhouette of the clothes she favors and nearly everything she will wear for this span of only days that he will know her again. These are things he knows with a dangerous melancholy that whatever is left of him that feels grasps, immediately and without his consent. Grasping for the comfort of those things. For the comfort of his friend – and what a dangerous word. These are things he knows will never leave him, have never truly left him, and will now be gone all too quickly.
These are, this is, she is the one problem he has. She is what compels him to be here. She is what anchors him to the world. She is the one who charges her hopes – and her name's hope – on his capacity here as Archer. She is the one reason he has – he has – to let himself stay.
⚜
His first few appeals to Rin's good graces – following her orders to clean up after his arrival, preparing tea for her in the morning – are done, he thinks, out of a sense of pragmatism. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that old habits quickly reemerge and that new ones form and that there is little he can bring himself not to do for her.
Rin's wasted Command Seal might have done little in itself – might have. He still isn't sure. But what certainly has had an effect on him is her reckless insistence that things fall in her favor. He feels its echo in the stupidity that had led him to be here, to be the sort of creature who could be summoned back to her like this, incomplete. He knows that knowing her had changed him, even lifetimes ago when he had still been alive. He knows that the first time he was here, he had learned half a lesson she had been trying to teach him.
The other half, he still hasn't learned. He knows he hasn't, and it makes him watch her closely, do as she says, stay at her side – and whatever he says – try to listen.
“Archer,” Rin calls from the doorway of the washroom. She has cracked the door and billowing steam escapes, seeking cooler air.
“Yes, Rin,” he replies, not a question. He is sitting on the sofa in his physical form, waiting. He doesn't know why. He listens to the creaking, rushing noise of the water that runs down over her while she showers. He rubs his forehead. He is still rubbing his forehead. He tries not to think. He doesn't hide his eyes, either, because what is there to see? She is just a skinny teenager, still.
“I need your help,” Rin says through gritted teeth. It is a little less pompous than her usual demands, but he stands and approaches the door.
“Are you wearing anything?” he asks, hand flattened against one of the door's panels.
“Enough. You don't have a reason to look anyway. … Do you, Archer?” Rin asks. She raises her eyebrows at him, cocking her head as she looks along the line of her shoulder at him. She is wrapped in a thick, white towel that may or may not have a support beyond its fold and may or may not have anything beneath it.
He swallows thickly.
“You're nothing but skin and bones,” he says, and it means more than she knows. A world of flesh and bones and blood is all he has ever known even though he is a ghost.
“And hair,” she says. “All of this is giving me a headache,” Rin complains with a whine dragging through her voice. “Here,” she says, and he notices the ornate, glinting handle jutting back over her shoulder for him to take. He realizes that he has taken up the space of standing right behind her. He looks over her head and into the mirror.
At first, he thinks it's a dagger. That would be like her, but he frowns. He does not remember her hair becoming short, but he has lost a lot of things to the fog of a history he had tried to let go. He reaches out and feels cool metal and stone inlay, and he realizes that it is a hairbrush.
“Make yourself useful, Archer,” she coaxes in a sugary tone that makes him grind his teeth.
“Always with things you could do yourself,” he says, but he is already looking down the slick, slighty tangled masses of long, dark strands of hair. They look almost too perfect to need brushing, and they are dripping in a distinct spot at the base of her spine over the white towel.
“Archer,” she chides, looking down along the vanity. He notices that he cannot catch her eyes in the mirror and his own gaze falls. He starts to brush her hair, knowing somehow to start at the bottom and to work his way up, bit by bit. He frowns as he works. He wonders how he knows that. He feels the water fall away, gently wrung out. He sees her shoulders relax, a network of muscles following suit. He feels the towel give way a little. He hopes she won't let it fall to the ground.
⚜⚜⚜
Rin knows that this isn't part of the ritual, part of the magecraft she is performing. She also knows that the same does not necessarily have to be true. She stays close to Archer. She can be practical when it is necessary, but she likes his company. She likes to know that he is present in her house, at her side. She likes it when he materializes – when he is physical.
She stands close enough to him to feel his body heat. He breathes, whether or not there is any call for it. He has a heartbeat.
She feels cold sometimes. She feels the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She feels what warmth remains in her center appear on her skin in splotches. She is exhausted. She is running hot. Magecraft hurts sometimes; that is the life of a magus, but this is something else. Her limbs ache. She notices the scent of Archer's sweat and wonders why he even has any. She remembers it all the same. She wants to hide her face against his shoulder, to bury it in his chest. She knows that she doesn't need to rest her feet in his lap. She knows that she does not need to fall asleep against his body on the sofa. She knows that she does not need to parade him around – even on the rooftops – in public like he is her own, like he is real, but he feels so much like he is.
⚜
Shirou is so much simpler. He is warm, too. She sees something in his eyes that Archer's lack in a way that she cannot quite put her finger on. Shirou is strong, too. Determined. There are plenty of reasons that she should be more sensible, even if she is going to seek out someone with a lot of potential – a servant or a magus. She had never considered this as a real, possible strategy at all, though. It troubles her. She has more important things to do for the most dangerous winter she has ever lived through. If she is to make it to the end, she knows there will be sacrifices.
The closer that end comes, though, the fewer she wants to make. She knows that Shirou is her natural enemy, no matter what alliance she makes. She tries to kick the problem down the road. They behave as though they can simply be friends, even if she knows it must end sooner rather than later. She likes his Servant, too. She likes the way she seems like a normal girl, a normal woman, and nothing of the sort. She can tell that Archer is having none of this and that he prefers to stay away from them as much as he can. She can't blame him even though she would like to.
Once, she climbs up to where he is waiting. She is not as graceful or as silent as she would like to be. She grunts as she hoists herself up onto the edge of some precarious ledge of her family's western mansion – all hers but with a boy and a rival Servant downstairs.
“Time to come in, Archer,” she calls.
“What are you doing up here? Haven't I told you to stay in the cellar?” Archer asks her. He appears, arms folded over his chest.
“Haven't you accepted me as your Master since then?” Rin counters breathlessly. She feels herself hauled up to her feet by her forearm, still breathless and collecting herself. She smooths her skirt quickly, dusting off her bottom, too. “Pretty up here, isn't it?” she heaves softly.
“You shouldn't be up here,” Archer says, holding his line – harder than he has on some nights.
“What is it?” she asks, craning her neck to look up at him upside down a bit.
“Nothing,Rin,” Archer chides. She feels her name in his voice and frowns, leveling her chin with the ground and feeling the dizziness settle. She folds her arms across her chest.
“You don't like that we have guests,” she observes.
“It can't last, Rin,” Archer says. “They have to die for us to win,” he reminds her. She bristles, but she doesn't step away from him.
“What is winning, anyway?” Rin sighs, turning her back on the drop down and looking up at him. “Who says—”
“You said. You said you wanted to win because it was what you were meant to do. What you are – a magus? You should want to win no matter who it costs,” Archer lectured her.
Rin knows that she shouldn't do anything foolish – not up here, not anywhere – but she feels herself reach forward. She feels her palms flatten. She feels herself push at his chest like it is a locked gate before her.
“You're a Servant! You're not even a real man, and you're... you're mine. You're my card, my Archer,” Rin yells at him, and she is glad that her family's estate is large enough for her carrying voice to perhaps only disturb Shirou or Saber below. He doesn't fall backward. He goes rigid. She finds that it would have been more likely that she would have pushed herself off the roof with the momentum. Her hands clench tight into his red cloak.
“Rin, I need to take you down from here,” Archer says, and then he reaches around her waist. He envelops her, but it isn't what she wants – to be safe on the ground.
⚜⚜⚜
He tries to keep to his mission – missions. Both of them. The mission she has called him here to fulfill – the mission she has made him swear to do and the mission he has given himself. Only, they are at odds with each other. One mission is to make sure she lives; the other is to make sure he dies.
She wants him to live, too. He can see it more every day. She grasps, she clings, and she gives him orders that aren't the best she could do. He has seen as many chains of command as he has seen lives taken, and he knows what she is doing. He has seen her work, and he knows what she could do.
He knows what she has done to him.
He sees himself in her bedroom mirror. He examines the red that covers him and thinks of the difference in that boy who sleeps elsewhere in the house. The only red on him is on top of his head, thoughtless and by no choice of his own. He doesn't wear a sea of blood. He doesn't smell of it. Not the way she does.
She appears as an apparition, much the way he can. She darts in front of him and meets his eyes in the mirror. He doesn't know why she seems to like to do that. It unnerves him. She ought to be in her nightdress, but instead she is still fully dressed in her stockings, skirt, shirt. The only thing missing is her shoes. He knows what manners dictate, but he wears his boots everywhere. After all, he is not real in a way that would make him need to change.
“Archer,” she says softly.
“You ought to be sleeping, Master,” he reminds her wearily, for whatever good it will do.
“I know,” she says softly. “It's just—I've been thinking...”
He feels his heart beat faster. Feeling so corporeal makes him feel almost sick, too.
“Rin. You know you should be saving your thoughts for—”
She surprises him again. He feels her slender body pressed against his. She is tiptoeing, and he reaches for her shoulders, intent on pushing her back down to stand flat on the floor. Instead, he feels her lips pressed and tilted against his. His hands push down, a little, but she resists. She pushes hard, arching her feet and kissing him a little more thoroughly. Even this is an argument.
“Rin,” he scolds when he manages to pull himself away instead. He reaches up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand – certainly not the most flattering response he could give a woman. She isn't a woman yet. She isn't the woman he knew, before he died, even.
“Archer,” she says, “I know what I'm doing.”
“Do you?” he asks. He manages to meet her eyes. It feels like one impossible feat accomplished after what she had just done. He raises his eyebrows skeptically anyway. This feels normal, too. Dangerously so.
“It isn't useless,” she announces.
“I didn't say it was, but if you need to be a hormonal wreck with someone, please go do it with the boy downstairs. Could even kill him afterward when you regret it – save us both the trouble,” he says, words rolling off his tongue with a bite before he can stop himself.
“I wouldn't doubt that he already has something to do,” Rin says. She looks at the floor, thoughtfully, then back up at him. She approaches him again, hardly anywhere to go but right into his chest. “It isn't unheard of... Masters and their Servants...”
“I'm well-aware,” he says with a crinkle of his nose. It brings up less than pleasant thoughts, memories – knowledge he has that has no place here yet. Thoughts of someone else he could cannot save lay not far beyond. Rin tugs at his sleeve again.
“If I could keep you a little longer...” she says, “I would. But no matter what happens, you're the first person who hasn't left me alone here since I was a child.”
She says it with a whimsy that reminds him that maybe she isn't just a girl. She is a magus, and he knows what might have followed for him in a life he must not live. He feels himself start to give up. Whatever she wants, it won't matter in the end. She will have lost something, with or without his compliance.
“Rin, you need your strength, and I don't need your energy,” he says dryly, showing that he knows every possible angle, every possible excuse.
“Do you ever take this off?” she asks, indicating the clasps of his cloak.
“Rin, if you want something, just order me to do it,” he says, leveling his gaze straight forward. He finds himself looking at nothing in particular, an indistinct reflection on a window pane. In the periphery of his vision, he can see her scowling a little. The way she tugs at his clothes isn't with as much confidence now.
“It isn't like that,” she says. She pulls down until her fingers slide away and fall at her sides. She goes over to her bed and flops down onto her stomach. She is very still for a moment, then she sighs audibly. She sits up, her back to him, and peels her shirt off. She has no apparent intent to entice anymore. She simply seems to trust him, whatever his reaction.
His throat feels dry. Somehow, that makes all of this worse.
“I wasn't suggesting you waste another Command Seal,” he replies.
“I'm embarrassed enough, Archer. You don't have to do anything,” Rin promises. He can see from where he stands that her ears are hot.
He sighs and removes his cloak. Then he has the shirt beneath, and finally his chest his bare. It seems only fair since he can see the clasp of Rin's dark bra biting softly into her pale skin.
“... Rin, you can see whatever you want,” he sighs. He approaches her bed and stands at its side, but he does not move to touch her. “But you've said it yourself. I'm not even a real man.”
He sees her eyes flit over, reluctant at first, but then they are wide and open. She looks up at him and then she is studying his chest – muscle and scar alike. He can feel her eyes boring into any soul he has left.
“... Can I?” she asks. She sits up on her knees a little, turning toward him. She has forgotten that she isn't wearing a shirt or simply doesn't care.
“I told you – whatever you want. Order it, and I'll do it,” he says.
“I don't want you like that. I want... this because...” Rin says, but she presses her lips together and trails off, glancing away.
“Because?” he presses. He needs to know if this isn't just another inane request. It has to be, but he tells himself what he needs to tell himself to know what he wants to know.
“I could have taken care of it before now. There are people I'm supposed to put in my debt, after all... For a lot of reasons,” Rin says. He wants to ask more, but she is unwavering in the way she looks into his eyes. He knows that she knows what she is talking about. He knows that it would only anger him, break his heart to ask – and he shouldn't have one left to break.
“It... isn't that you aren't beautiful, Rin. It isn't that I – or... any man... really – wouldn't...”
“Shut up,” Rin chides. “I asked. And you can go stand on the roof if you want, but I want you to... stay,” she says. She reaches out and instead of immediately feeling over his tensed abdomen or his chest, she traces gashes and scars. She has her own, too, if nowhere near as many, marring otherwise perfect, soft skin.
Tohsaka Rin has a way of getting her way. He does not feel his last moment of hesitation before she hoists him down over her. His body is larger than hers, heavier, and he is holding his weight on one arm that he can vaguely remember adjusting not to pin and pull her hair. He is kissing her, but in spite of all of this it seems like it is the other way around. All of this seems like it is her idea, and that is what makes him able to bear it. The fact that he remembers it more with every second makes the clumsy, fresh, determined insistence of what she is doing all the more strange.
“Archer,” she says, pushing him back enough to speak but still holding him by his jaw and the side of his neck.
“... Rin, you don't need to give me anything. You are strong enough on your own,” he says. He feels like he is babbling, and she must think so too because she just stares at him, stone-faced, then smiling. Then she kisses him again without a word, more gently again.
“Here,” she says after a few moments, moving his hand to invite him to touch her.
He does. There is only so much fighting he can do with her, against her, before he realizes that the argument is lost. He is slow, gentle. First, his hand frees one breast and then the other. At first his warm, calloused palm brushes over each – ghosting over her skin in a way that seems appropriate. Her bra is still pushed down, cups awkwardly folded beneath, pushing her breasts higher. He sees the effect this has and feels blood rush down his back and through his low abdomen.
This is why it is so hard to die when she keeps insisting he should feel alive.
When she complains, the rolling of her hips and writhing at her waist sign enough without real words, he swallows down his own desires and slides his hand down her abdomen. It is taut in a way he thinks it shouldn't have to be. She isn't as whole and sturdy as she one day will be. There is still a youthful frailty to her, and if he thinks about it too hard – even at seventeen – it makes him want to recoil.
Her voice is near the same, though. He closes his eyes and his palm presses flat against her skin. His fingers push beneath two elastics – her skirt and her panties. He does not make her wait for that. She gasps softly as his fingers brush along past the soft, unkempt hair that seems to have a neatly defined edge at the top. Then the slight coarseness gives way to soft, slick flesh that for a sickening moment reminds him of blood. He can tell the difference, though, and he quickly backtracks – there is no blood. Not even the kind one might be inclined to expect, he reminds himself with a slight grimace.
He isn't sure if she caught him making a face or if it is a more favorable response when her voice flattens into a low whimper. When he looks to check, her eyes are closed.
“Rin?” he asks, going very still. He has another moment of feeling stricken in the back of the head, dizzy, during the seconds it takes her to shake her head and meet his eyes. Her brows are knit together into something resembling a frown, but when she speaks she is not quite petulant.
“Archer,” she says, “that isn't...” She doesn't finish a sentence. Instead, her hips lift from the bed a little and her exhale of breath is as much communication as he needs.
Archer exhales and feels a rush of relief energize him more than he expects it to. He draws two fingertips up, feeling the fabric of her panties press against the back of his hand. The first time his fingers pass on either side of the hardened nub of her clit, they drag a little against delicate skin that seems to catch at his callouses. Then, as his fingers straighten out between the soft, full lips he feels his fingers coated with that slick liquid that he again reminds himself isn't blood as he breathes deeply. As he does, he realizes he can smell the faintly sharp, hardly-there, permeating scent of it, too.
Instinctively, one finger curls in, pressing between the second, thinner set of lips, dipping into her body to draw some of the thick flow of it up over her clit. She grunts very softly when he curves his finger inside, even only to his first knuckle. He checks her face again, lightheaded with the inescapable reality that he is doing this. His nature fights against his dull crisis of conscience; the very sensations that make him doubt himself are things he naturally fights against, trying to silence them until there is no room left for empty things like doubt.
“Have you done this before?” he asks, voice low and even – controlling his breath.
He feels her squirm in protest, but she is lifting her hips toward his hand again. He thinks she feels warmer, and then it catches up with her – the flush on her face and her chest.
“It doesn't matter!” she announces. Her voice is full of heavy, erratic breath. “Just hurry up,” she demands. She parts her legs and bends them at the knees slightly, planting the soles of her feet against the bed.
He doesn't hurry up. He can read her request, but she doesn't make it out loud. Instead, he takes his time – first rubbing tight circles against her clit until she arches her back and whines. He stops when those whines become complaints and reluctant avoidance. Then he favors gently working one finger in and out. It seems to lull her more than anything else, but when he tries too her eyes shoot back open with a little gasping start. He gives her a questioning look, but before he can ask her eyelids hood back closer to her pupils. He takes that to mean that the initial shock has settled into something at least tolerably more pleasant.
His arm works harder. He feels it start as a warmth and then turn into the faint, satisfying ache of work in his bicep. He follows her breathing and the sounds she makes. He leans down over her body while his arm pushes her up by millimeters repeatedly and she sinks back down again, sometimes hard and deliberate and other times in a kind of placated stupor. He feels her body respond sometimes – tightening around his fingers – and it's unclear if she knows she's doing it. She closes her eyes for a while, but every so often she looks up at him – his face or down at his chest, across his shoulder and down at his arm. He knows that she is with him, aware, no matter how lost and distant this sometimes makes her seem.
He could not say the same for himself. Sometimes, he is there with her. He is aware of how fragile and delicate her skin feels – inside and out. He is aware of the way she seems to grit and grind her teeth sometimes – a subtle contrast to the soft, muted movements of the rest of her body as she surrenders to is hand and experience. Then that starts to unravel his presence of mind, edging him closer to the space of being a machine. Sent to cauterize a wound in humankind through thoughtless murder or sent to fuck away a woman's sorrows years before they really begin – it's the same difference. And that thought makes him swallow thickly though the strength and rhythm of his arm doesn't falter a bit.
He is an...
“Archer,” she sighs at him. She has blinked open her eyes and looks at him heavy-lidded though she is the furthest thing from asleep. Rattled and caught between here and somewhere else, he tries to anticipate what she is about to ask so she won't see it. His thumb changes angle and he starts to make gentle back and forth motions over her clit while his fingers move in and out, as surely bit with a little less depth to accommodate the angle. “Archer—” she whines again a moment later.
He blinks at her, confused and stilled.
“What?” he asks. He thinks the tops of his own ears are hot.
“Archer, that's enough. I want... I want the real thing,” she says, speaking the last thought very quickly as she settles on a euphemism that is elegant enough for her.
“Rin,” he chides. “Let it happen. You don't need to give me anything,” he reminds her.
“I don't care; I want it,” she says, still rapidly and through slightly gritted teeth. She makes her hips tense, pushing up against his hand defiantly.
He sighs. He looks at her bared chest. He looks down to her navel. He sees his own hand plunged beneath skirt and panties. He feels himself withdraw his hand. He notices that two fingertips have gone a little dappled from being submerged. He realizes he's doing this. He is resigned to it.
He's doing this.
Panties slide down her lifted hips and then she lets her bottom fall back against the bed. She quickly draws her knees up, lightly kicking her feet – still wrapped in stockings – to aid him in slipping them the rest of the way off. Then her skirt and belabored bra are left. She squirms and does something practiced and magical behind her back. A second later only the skirt remains and a soft, red bite mark all around her torso.
She exhales almost comically hard as she drapes the bra across the other side of the bed. From his place, seated at her feet, risen to his knees, he looks her up and down. Her skirt isn't lifted quite high enough for him to see her, but he sees the soft sheen trailing on both her thighs. His own erection – long-pressed inside his dark pants – throbs with his heartbeat and he lets himself think about it for the first time.
As soon as he does, he unfastens his pants. She slides up a little in a position to watch with widened eyes. First, her knees knock softly together, but he can still see between them now. Seemingly absentminded, she pulls her knees back apart and loosely spreads her legs as if in casual anticipation of the need for it. There is less urgency now and a contrast of pale and pink on her face. He almost apologizes, but he thinks – he hopes – that's interest in her eyes, so he goes about shedding the rest of his own clothes, methodical but still here with her.
Naked and undeniably hard, he crouches down again at the foot of the bed. With her bent, parted legs, there is more than arms length between them. Their eyes meet and they regard each other for a moment. Her lips form a tight, thoughtful, slightly wiggling line.
“You can change your mind,” he says softly. He hates that the thought of it aches. He wants to curse her for putting him in this position, but looking on her face and its open, bold curiosity and blank, restrained terror, he can't.
“No,” she almost squeaks. It relieves some of the tension because he also almost laughs. “No,” she repeats with a soft rattle in her throat. “I am satisfied,” she announces with a haughty leveling of her chin, straightening of her neck, flouncing of her hair. She keeps speaking before he can seize the out, make a crude joke, and leave her wanting. Her brows furrow in a casual way that he can only think of as wicked. “Besides, if you are brought down tomorrow by Berserker or Saber, I'm still not likely to do better for this,” she says. She says it as if she is reading the weather forecast aloud. It infuriates him, and instead of cursing her he curses the warm little bubble of pride she's planted in his chest. “Come here,” she orders, and obeys without finishing the curse.
He approaches her with a kiss this time. It seems only right. He knows this is probably some aberration here, a sin against his purpose, but she is asking and he does not want to tell her no.
Her hand lifts up. He does not close his eyes entirely the way she does, and he notices it in the periphery of his vision. It hangs in the air until she adjusts and catches him by the jaw. Her thumb brushes across his skin, brushing faint, always hours-old stubble and smoother skin alike. It lulls him, too, which is dangerous but exactly what she wants.
She slides down little by little and he rises back over her. She flops her skirt up onto her belly, not seeming to mind that it stays trapped beneath her. He can see that she has leaked onto the black fabric, already leaving a stain that is white at the edges. He feels his own heartbeat again – everywhere.
When she reaches down to touch him, her fingers try to ball in a fist around him. She feels up and down along it. She is clumsy but seems to know how to quickly steady herself. She also seems to weigh it in her hand which makes him frown and smirk at once. Then he forgets the strange amusement when she seems satisfied and starts to rub the head of his cock up and down from her clit to the waiting, wet, softened slit.
He groans so loudly it surprises him. He quickly regains breathless silence, but he feels heat course all over him and particularly concentrate in his center. He tries to remember the last time he felt this if only to soften the maddening blow to his sense of control. He can't; it is another thing he has tried to consign to the wastes of time and now regrets letting go.
His fingers have made her easier to press into, and when she starts trying to guide him inside, he follows. He hears her little yelping gasp at the same spot inside, but in the same way as before, she settles and sighs a moment later. Then he is inside her, and there is no going back to the moment when he should have told her this was too much to ask of either of them.
She breathes and blows out her exhale softly, breath falling on his chest with how she angles her head.
“Okay,” she says, reaching up and taking the backs of his shoulders. He cannot tell if she means to move him by them, but whatever she is doing the touch is just soft and steady. He takes it to mean that she is ready and finds a slow, steady rhythm with his hips.
While he moves, quickens, hardens even more, while he grasps and she touches and clutches and gasps, his focus comes in and out, searching like he is spinning at the top of a lighthouse. They are both sweating. They stick together and come apart. He is moving harder and faster and with purpose. He is gritting his teeth and biting the inside of his cheek. He is grinding bone into her flesh; he is filling her tight for merciless moments and then giving her respite with more movement that sounds and feels far less graceful.
Sometimes, he is simply working on a task and trying not to think or feel. Other times he cannot help it, and his breath shakes without enough exertion to demand it. His arms tremble, too, like holding himself up should matter. Sometimes, he lets her mouth touch his only to find that he wants it and responds, too. Then his mouth is on her neck, her shoulder, and even against her hair. He breathes in.
Finally, she calls his title and rank and not his name. She babbles it like a name, though. The first time, she is alerting him of something. The second time, it breaks off. The third time, he is not sure it is his name or if it is a whimper. Then the last time before it breaks off into a low, moaning growl, it is a desperate reprimand. He can feel her digging crescents into the backs of his arms. He can feel her spreading her thighs wider while they tremble. He keeps going – he must not focus too much on the way she clenches involuntarily with the beating of her own heart around him. He just works and finally finds a focal point on the headboard above her until she stills and he stops.
He is still hard and she is spent. He is leaking his own clear fluid without much respite, but he pulls out of her and gently crouches below her again with barely a regretful tremble.
She lies there, starry-eyed and panting for a few moments. Seeing the reddened, parted flesh between her legs and the way it shines makes him feel like his own desire is trying to gut him from within, but he doesn't say a word. He reaches up, out, and gently squeezes her knee. It is a fond touch as he shifts his weight to move into the other side of the bed. He lies down, mostly on his back but propped upon his elbows. He catches his breath. He looks up at the canopy of her bed. He tries to think of something that will bring him down.
He couldn't finish inside her. He shouldn't finish at all. His mind swims as he tries to think of something unpleasant but finds himself casting up his own boundaries. He still wants, he still aches, but he is not alive anymore. She has drawn him into some fantasy of hers, but it is something she cannot really have. He sees that now. He had seen it before but was too stubborn to listen.
“Archer?” she asks. She sounds almost back to herself now, but he barely hears her through a watery distortion that is momentarily present in his ears. He frowns and makes himself look at her anyway. “Archer,” she repeats with pointed patience as if she thinks he hasn't heard her but should have.
She is pulling some sweaty hair away from clinging to the side of her face. She meets his eyes, smiles in a bewitchingly calm manner – subdued – and glances down between his legs. “Archer...” she says again, expectantly.
“You keep saying,” he says, a little irritably even though he knows it is very poor form.
“What is that?” she asks with the same patience.
“... It's my—” he says, about to come up with some scathing tease that might be unforgivable under the circumstances, but then he sees the flicker in her eyes. “Rin...” he scolds.
“Lie back,” she says, nodding to the pillows along the headboard.
“Rin, I'm not going to—”
“Do what I ask? You've done such a good job so far,” she coaxes.
The way she speaks grips at him even without touch, and he relents – again, foolishly.
“Rin, this is really unnecessary,” he remarks, face hot when he confronts what exactly he is telling her not to do.
“Be quiet before I cover your face with a pillow,” she says very flatly. Her eyes are running up and down over his chest while he lies down on his back and sees the space between them grow just a little.
“After all that...” he murmurs, smirking at her.
“Quiet,” she reminds him, still as serious. She reaches out and places her hand on his low abdomen, perhaps emulating him from before. She feels over it and he tenses his muscles. She seems enchanted with the definition between them. It doesn't take long, though, for her true purpose to become apparent.
She grips him at the base of his erection with more confidence this time. She slides her hand up and envelops the head as her hand comes back down. She practices a few times, distracted, like she is not particularly concerned with what it feels like. He still can't manage to ignore it. Her clumsy touch is familiar and ancient. It is happening now, and he tries to resist, gritting his teeth, a sound coming from his throat.
“It isn't fair, Archer,” she informs him.
“Since when do you care?” he asks, teeth still a bit clenched.
“Don't be stupid,” she tells him. She is quiet for a while after that, hand seeking a quick, steady pace. Her arm doesn't seem to tire even though he can see the tension in her wiry muscles. He lifts his hips once, and then they fall back as he tries not to show her what it is doing to him. He hears her lips pop softly as she parts them after a thoughtful moment. She leans in, hair falling forward over her shoulder. He feels strands of it brush against his chest, tickling his skin.
“Rin, please. I don't...” he tries to explain, increasingly desperate.
“Don't what?” she asks, voice lowering toward a whisper.
“You shouldn't let me,” he says. He doesn't know where it comes from, but he is adamant. It feels like the guilt crystallizes, trying in vain to cool the heat that is concentrated inside the grip of her hand. He meets her eyes, earnest enough that he thinks he might convince her. He doesn't know what then. He just knows that he wants her to agree with him about this, at least. Then he hopes she'll know he's an idiot.
The second seems to be true. She shrugs one shoulder, tilting her head toward it. She looks back down at his erection with curious nonchalance.
“You're mine,” she says. “And I think you should.” She starts the steady, rhythmic motion again. He closes his eyes, but he still feels it, still hears it. While she works him in turn, her off hand touches his chest again. At first, he isn't sure she is touching him. Then he feels it – her thumb and forefinger, twisting lightly, lightly – brushing – against his skin as his nipple hardens. He groans again and looks up at her again. He feels his own eyelids starting to slip for a moment. He muffles something he shouldn't say.
“Come on, Archer,” she says. She laughs softly. It is musical and evil. She stops focusing on the whole length, instead only focusing on the end of it. The pressure almost hurts, and she coaxes, her voice itself laughter. She is a demon, but he doesn't want to take his eyes off her.
“Rin, please—” he says, but he shakes his head against the pillow a bit. He doesn't know what to ask for.
“Let me see... please,” she says softly, and her politeness – false, taunting as it probably is – undoes him. He feels himself spurt and spill over her hand. She doesn't stop until he groans deep from the depth of his abdomen.
“Rin...” he pleads again.
“There you go,” she says. He is surprised when she looks at her hand thoughtfully. He is even more surprised when she sticks out the tip of her tongue and tastes it. He is less surprised when she makes a contemplative if not entirely disgusted face and then wipes her hand on the bedclothes right to his side. When she is satisfied that she is clean enough, she reaches up and rubs her hand through his colorless hair. “Do you feel better?” she asks coyly. He breathes out giving her a droll expression that ends with a smile. He reaches up and his thumb touches her cheek, considering her beauty and that look he wishes he could wipe off her face. At least one of those like him had been right once during his lifetime. She looks like she does knows exactly what she is doing. She is proof that hell is other people.
Originally Posted by Snow
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